The Illusionist
by Fangirlnumbertwo
Summary: Threading the fine line between physical attraction and blood lust is an art. Hisoka and Machi have a few tricks up their sleeve.
1. The Illusionist

He teased his hair a little more before stepping out into the coliseum. As soon as the spotlights outlined his figure coming out of the fighters' waiting area, it began, the thunderous applause, the screaming. This was adoration, the crowd having paid orbital sums to see him. And they could afford it, couldn't they? This was the underground's high society; mafia bosses, businessmen with more than a few shady connections, politicians who indulged in voyeuristic violence. Occassionaly, acclaimed actors and supermodels would find their way into this crowd, if they knew all the right people. In the Celestial Tower, there was a thin line between organized crime, politics and glamour.

It was rapture. He loved every moment of it, the world's most powerful putting their lives on hold to watch him do what he did best. He would kill a fighter during a match just as they were one or two wins away from becoming Floor Master.

His eyes scanned the crowd, noting the steel gaze of an elderly, well-dressed man in one of the rows closest to the ring. This businessman had wagered half of his family's estate on Hisoka's victory.

"They say you're the next big thing around here", says his opponent, a tall and lean man in his mid-fifties. He had been a farmer who discovered his nen abilities defending his land from poachers. His sun-browned face had deep creases across the forehead and around the mouth. The wrinkles around his eyes indicated a gentle sense of humor. "But three victories aren't anything. Only a quarter of Tower fighters live through their fourth match. I'd say you're wet behind the ears, boy", he said with an easy smile, and deftly scratched the stubble on his chin.

The crowd roared. "Tell me that after I put you in a wheel chair, old man", Hisoka said. He liked it when his opponents came off condescending; it created tension on the ring. Any dramatist will say that conflict is essential to a good show. "Has-beens have no business fighting new blood", he added. His left hand reached for the pack of cards hidden behind his right sleeve, and the fight commenced.

More than an hour later, Hisoka would not remember any details of how it happened except that it was sheer ecstasy, the feeling of going higher and higher until he thought he couldn't take it anymore, and finally, the release, his opponent's scream as his cards sliced through the man's neck, nearly decapitating him. He had a vague recollection of creating an illusion on the floor with his Dokkiri Texture, and asking the opponent whether the world was indeed round or really flat, as a distraction. The man, having been a farmer, god rest his soul, answered in earnest. Then there was that nicely-dressed business man getting up from his seat with a smug look on his face.

Adoration. Fans trying to push their way to his dressing room. Security managed to keep them at bay, letting them shout praises ("My kid looks up to you, man!") and pregnancy claims ("Remember York Shin?") without letting them get too close. He was still too dazed with pleasure to say anything witty. He could only afford them a brief smile, one of a content man who had the world at his feet.

After one of the doctors did a check on him and found two broken ribs, they put him in a medical corset and sent him on his way.

That night, the Tower sent a limousine to pick him up from his quarters. He had on a black, pin-striped suit, and polished leather shoes. He gave himself a pleased look in the mirror. Two years ago, he didn't even know what cuff links were for, or aftershave. But these were things that the Tower's shareholders lavished on him. He generated profit for the Tower, and they took note of his bankability. He was strong, but more than that, he had charisma. People wanted to see what he would do next. He could break into a song-and-dance number, and they would still buy tickets for the next match.

Some of his shareholder patrons reserved a fancy restaurant uptown in celebration of his victory. When he got there, the guests were already chatting among themselves. They stopped briefly to acknowledge his arrival, with some of them approaching to shake his hand and compliment the match. Most of these were people he had never met before, and the only ones he knew by face have been to all of his matches. But that made no difference. They talked to him like he was an old friend, treating his success as if it were their own.

"Congratulations, Mr. Hisoka." It was the businessman who placed bets on him earlier. Clark, was it? "Your fighting style is impeccable. My business associate lost his Jaguar to me earlier."

"Is that right?", Hisoka said, flashing him a smile. Please don't let this be another conversation about sports cars, he thought. Sports cars, he believed, were just like teddy bears. Darling things, but useless. Besides, he preferred balloons to teddy bears.

"I have someone here who wants to be introduced. She's a big fan", Clark said with a wink. He led Hisoka to a woman sitting by herself at a table. She was in her mid-forties, but she was wearing a juvenile, black tube dress. She looked young for her age, and anyone who knew the tricks of the trade would notice the perpetually surprised look on her face, as well as the slightly protruding upper lip. She beamed when they neared her.

"So, this is the man of the moment. You look more handsome without face paint." She offered her hand for him to kiss, but Hisoka wasn't well-versed in upper-class pleasantries. He shook her hand instead. He'd seen shareholders do that a lot with each other. The woman, however, took this for coyness. "Please, sit with me. I don't get a lot of interesting company these days."

"I don't see why not", Hisoka said with a smile, and sat next to her.

"This is Mrs. de Luca, Hisoka. She owns half of Europa's fashion empire. She's a former model and a good friend of mine", Clark said with fondness.

"Oh, call me Alex. You shouldn't be afraid to get familiar with me", she told Hisoka.

"Never", Hisoka purred. He could tell she was all too willing to get familiar. She had the air of a woman who got everything she wanted out of life, that is, except for a happy marriage. "Why, I feel like we can get to know each other very well". He might as well amuse himself.

"Why don't I leave you two alone?", Clark said with a mischievous gleam in his eye, and went to greet some colleagues.

"Tell me, how does it feel to be a brawler? Putting your life on the line like that. It must get so hard", Alex said, as if she were talking to a puppy. She let her fur stole drop lower around her shoulders.

Hisoka took offense to this, but nothing gave it away save for a slight furrowing of the eyebrows. He kept his hands folded together on the table. "A brawler? You're mistaken, dear", he said, affecting the same tone of joviality he mustered earlier, "I'm not a brawler, I'm an entertainer. I make people happy. And there's an art to everything I do." How dare this washed-up woman liken him to common, back-alley brawlers. If she saw any of his matches, she would know that they were pure drama - his deceit and the look on his opponents' faces as the show came to a harrowing conclusion. It was always catharsis for the audience.

Alex smiled; she thought this man was very precocious. "Oh? Tell me more about this... this art of yours", she said, playing with the pendant around her neck, oblivious to the damage she had just done.

"Well, it's a little complicated, you see", Hisoka said, putting a hand on his chin, "I can't really put it into words. But I can demonstrate."

"Show me", Alex said. Hisoka took a table napkin and blindfolded her with it. She laughed. "So soon? I didn't think you'd be a man of such, how do you put it? Inclinations?"

"You have to surprise your audience, Alex. Grab them by the neck", Hisoka said. If she could see his face, she would see his large, chesire grin. He wrapped another napkin around her right arm, and created an illusion with it. It wasn't his best work, he mused, but it would have to do for this occassion.

"You can look now."

When she removed the blindfold, she saw a large, festering wound on her right arm. There was yellowish-white pus inside the deep incision.

"How do you like it?"

A thin scream disrupted the party. By the time concerned party-goers reached their table, Hisoka had removed the table napkin. "Look at the commotion you've caused. Is this any way to behave with the man of the moment?", he said, as if scolding a child. Alex stared at him with a bovine look on her face. She might as well be seeing a holy apparition.

Whispers from the guests The quartet of violinists had stopped playing and looked in their direction.

"Is everything alright?", Clark asked, taking his friend by the shoulders.

"You'll excuse me if I leave early, won't you?", Hisoka said, rising from his chair, "my real match starts tonight."


	2. Levitation

Machi noticed the dark circles beneath her eyes in the mirror. One of the good things about rave parties was that few people used the restroom, aside from the occassional quickies. But these happened inside cubicles and were often tolerable. She'd been attending rave parties for the past three nights; she liked getting lost in the throngs of dancers. The songs were indistinguishable from one another and sounded like they were coming from a place outside of this reality; neon lights gave a surreal quality to otherwise bleak warehouses.

It was all an illusion, really – the idea is to trick party-goers with clever lighting, music and strong drugs. The moment they step into the warehouse, they leave a solid, practical world for another one where things melted into strange shapes and colors. On a good night they even forget that they have human forms; they become nothing more than a disembodied consciousness that knew only the beat of the music.

The alcohol was spiked and she steered clear of it. After drinking from the faucet, she stepped back into alien lights and immediately fell in sync with the dancing crowd. This was her life's work: blurring the boundaries of her identity to meld into a bigger, more powerful collective. And tonight, it was this crowd that she gave herself up to. She swayed and moved her limbs to the beat, faster and faster.

Until someone gave her a soft tap on the shoulder. She turned around to see the thin, acne-scarred face of a young man. She could see his lips moving. When he saw that she didn't understand, he made the gesture of smoking an invisible joint. She nodded, and they exited the warehouse. They found a spot in the parking area, not far from where a handful of party-goers squatted on the ground, looking up at rainbow-colored flying fish that weren't there.

"I think I saw you at another rave last night", the man asked as he rolled up a joint. "So this is really your thing, huh?"

"You could say that", Machi replied.

Brushing his dreadlocks away from his face, he put the joint in his mouth and lit it. After a puff, he handed it to her. While she smoked it, the man introduced himself as Bay. He was finishing up his master's degree in visual art, had some plates to submit the following morning but decided to come to the rave instead. He needed to feel inspired to get anything done, he said, and he just wasn't feeling it tonight.

"How about yourself, kid?"

"I do some odd jobs. No degree", Machi said, measuring her words.

"That's the life. Fuck the education system, who wants to be a corporate slave?"

Machi decided not to respond to this. She wasn't sure what corporate slaves were. Did they work for the Mafia?

"You know, I have stronger shit in my apartment. Ever done cocaine?", Bay asked with a grin.

The last and only time she ever did cocaine, she had blacked out and woken up next to a tall, red-haired man the following day. She had been groggy, coming down from the high, but managed to tiptoe out of the room in case the man woke up and asked for second servings.

"How about it? We could have some fun", he said, gently pulling at his goatee.

"I think not", she said, handing him what was left of the joint, "You can have your stick back. It's pretty weak stuff".

"Aww, come on. Why are you so uptight?", he said, and made the mistake of grabbing her arm.

In the short distance, one of the party-goers dropped a plastic cup.

"Whoa, dude's levitating!", the man said, standing up from a squatting position. His companion turned to look.

"Cool. Just cool, man."

Machi left Bay hanging by a thread under one of the trees.


	3. Sleight of Hand

That was how Hisoka found his prey: walking away from an aborted sexual invitation. Watching the whole ordeal was enough to make him go weak in the knees. He was aware of his injury, but given how elusive his target was, he was willing to risk it tonight if he could get her alone.

He'd been watching her for half a year now, but took care not to follow her once she broke away from groups of people. He lost her during the one time he did so. She had picked up on his presence, no matter how well he thought he hid his aura. She entered a crowded area of the city. It had been a night market, and she managed to lose him in the in the twist and turns of the street bazaar. She moved very quickly; when she passed by, shoppers only saw a blur. He could tell that she specialized in stealth. After a couple of hours searching in the crowd, he gave up.

Since then, he couldn't find her in any of her old haunts. She had been cautious. After that incident, she never went to the same rave party twice. And then a Genei Ryodan mission whisked her away for a month or so. The absence of a daily routine coupled with an overseas heist made it harder to track her down. Until he found her again two weeks ago, quite by accident, as he went for a stroll downtown. The littered streets and stray dogs reminded him of his childhood. When he saw her coming out of a convenience store, he knew that the stars were on his side. The excitement was almost similar to seeing an ex-lover after many years of separation. He scoured the area every night since, and asked by-standers if there were regular warehouse parties nearby.

She was dressed like a man tonight. Her hair, newly-cut, reached just above her ears. She wore straight cut jeans and a black, long-sleeved polo. Only the arched eyebrows and a slight curve of the hips gave her femininity away. It appealed to him how androgynous she appeared in these clothes. He remembered how he had first seen her, clearly intoxicated and asking him for a slow dance. He didn't know how it was possible with electronica, but how could a man say no? He could circle that waist with his hands. On the dance floor, he merely stood in front of her, watching her make languid movements, her body just a breath away from his. She made a curious impression on him, her figure swaying slowly to the loud, fast-paced music.

In his quarters, she had been responsive. She even let him kiss the spider tattoo on her left thigh. He had already been hearing stories in the Celestial Tower about the Genei Ryodan, a band of nen-users who wiped out a powerful clan a year ago. The Tower's janitors, attendants and cooks amused themselves like a group of children huddled around a camp fire, trying to scare each other off with hearsay stories of brutality and supernatural strength. They said the Ryodan was so terrible that the Devil himself marked them as his own by embedding giant spiders in their bodies. One of them looked like a large beast, they said, and left a strong, musky scent everywhere he went. Another one turned into a bird when he fled the scene of a murder, spreading greenish-black wings as he jumped from one rooftop to the next. These stories were dismissed by the shareholders as urban legend, nothing more, and were relegated to kitchen gossip. But Hisoka was convinced that he had been sitting on a nen goldmine that night. Quite literally. He had enjoyed himself too much, and snored through much of the morning that followed. He had wanted to bang his head on the wall.

He was aware of how men idealize the women they love, so much so that they end up disappointed when the real thing fails to resemble the figure on the pedestal. But he was a man who took chances, and he approached her then. There was a flash of recognition in Machi's eyes. Don't tell me he wants to know why I never called, she thought.

"How come you never called?"

"It didn't occur to me", she managed to say.

Hisoka noticed small things about people; the way their hands move when they talk, their manner of walking - these details affected him. With Machi, it was her voice. It sent shivers down his spine. It reminded him of windchimes, but fuller and more resonant.

For Machi, it was like watching a road accident about to happen; she knew it was going to be bad, but she stayed where she was. Some of the few crises that Ryodan members haven't conquered were awkward ones that involved drugs and irresponsible sexual behavior.

"You don't mean that, do you? Because I'm very interested. I've been thinking about you." The last sentence was little more than a whisper. He might as well be handing her a love-note and some flowers. But his aura said otherwise; it licked the air around him. She could sense his bloodthirst. She had often seen it in the likes of Uvogin and Feitan. But she also noticed that it wasn't full-blown. He may have already had some of his fill.

She had two options. She could fight him now and send him crying to his mother, or she could handle him the same way she did hot-blooded Ryodan members. All it took was some persistent distraction. A large-scale nen fight, on the other hand, was something she had been trying to avoid since their last mission. The Ryodan members who participated had been adviced to keep a low profile for the time being. Judging from his aura, she could expect a tedious one. They would have to go at it until dawn, perhaps even longer.

"Can I get you a drink?", she asked.

"A drink? I prefer something else. Besides, you haven't answered my question", Hisoka said, putting his hands on his hips. "You shouldn't toy with my feelings like that."

"Well, that changes everything, doesn't it? That you've been thinking about me?". Machi said, trying to make puppy dog eyes. Hisoka thought she was getting a mild seizure. Before he could say anything, she had already taken his arm and was leading him to the warehouse.

"Oh, we're not going in there", Hisoka said, refusing to walk farther. "I'm not losing you to the crowd." His aura flared slightly.

There was an art to this. In rare cases she used humor to diffuse the tension, but most of the time indifference was the weapon of choice. For this one, she could use something new. "Come on", she said, making her voice register lower.

It dripped like syrup in his ears. Her aura was inviting now; in this closeness he could feel it stroking his skin. This was more like the girl who danced for him. He let himself be led by the hand. He was having a good day.

The makeshift bar consisted of a few beer pumps on a wooden table. The bartender was already passed out underneath it. She handed him a plastic cup. While drinking from it, he watched the lights play tricks on her face. A moment ago she was dotted pink, now she was yellow stripes.

"You're not drinking?", he asked, feeling his tongue getting thick. He had only finished half of his drink; his alcohol intake was stronger than this.

"I'd rather dance", Machi said, studying him. She could see sweat beads forming on his forehead and neck.

Two women who approached the bar to get drinks giggled at the sight of him. Hisoka heard birds chirping. "You should take your friend home, darling", one of them said. But Machi had began swaying to the music again, tossing her head back and forth. Hisoka watched her, a blaze of technicolored light moving in front of him. He couldn't recall where the entrance was. The bare, wooden walls had taken on the look of tinted glass, like the ones he used to see in old churches, except that they depicted stylized animals and not saints. As for the ceiling - well, there was no ceiling anymore. Only a large, dark cloud that gave off a lot of sparkle.

When he finally blacked out, Machi knew it was time to take leave of her admirer. As she walked away, something pulled her back to the unconscious man. For the remainder of the night, she realized that she couldn't get farther than a few metres away from him, even when she used brute strength. People had started leaving the warehouse. When it crossed her mind to concentrate an amount of nen in her eyes, she saw a thin, gummy substance connecting her arm to Hisoka's aura. She fumed. She couldn't get him to wake up, even when she yanked him by the hair. She ended up dragging him with her to a motel room at dawn.

On the double bed, which was still warm from the previous occupants' feverish tryst, she could only listen to Hisoka's quick, sharp breathing. He murmured things about conflict and catharsis every now and then. She eventually settled into shallow sleep, holding dreams of electric music at bay. In the morning, she was greeted by a text message from Shalnark. Her phone, put on silent the previous day, registered a lot of missed calls.

"Been trying to reach you. Just in: Number 4 was killed at the Celestial Tower yesterday."


End file.
